autorespond

Terminal Command Auto-Response

Abstract

autorespond(1) is a small utility for executing a command in an interactive terminal session and automatically sending a response input to the command in case of an interaction timeout.

It is intended to be used in training scenarios where some interactive commands (like a shell) have to be executed in a scripted session but they should be automatically terminated (like sending exit\n) in case the trainee does not manually interact with it. This allows the same scripting sessions to be executed in batch and interactively.

Installation

$ npm install -g autorespond

Usage

The Unix manual page contains detailed usage information.

Examples

# interrupt after 10 seconds after the last user interaction
$ autorespond -T 10 -r '\k{ctrl+c}\n' tail -f logfile

# terminate after 30 seconds in case of no user interaction at all
$ autorespond -t 30 -r 'exit\n' bash

License

Copyright © 2020-2021 Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall (http://engelschall.com/)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.